The South Florida theater community is in mourning after the passing of Louis Tyrrell, founding director of the Theatre Lab at Florida Atlantic University. Tyrrell died Friday, April 10, after a brief and sudden illness. He was 75. Tyrrell’s theater roots in Florida run deep. In 1974, he became the founding director of Florida Stage, a position he held for 24 years until … [Read more...]
Powerful ‘Last Yiddish Speaker’ mixes Jewish identity, American dystopia
In 1989, Florida Stage introduced us to fledgling playwright Deborah Zoe Laufer and her humorous yet thought-provoking saga of assimilation, The Last Schwartz. Since then, she has produced two handfuls of scripts in South Florida, as well as theaters across the country and around the globe. With her latest effort, The Last Yiddish Speaker, she returns to the theme of Jewish … [Read more...]
‘Rooted,’ at Theatre Lab, sees actors dig rewardingly deep
Botany and belief systems, both real and dubious, are at the heart of Deborah Zoe Laufer’s Rooted, her latest exploration of life’s contradictions, served up with a strong measure of whimsy. Delivering her ultimately thoughtful outlook is a trio of eccentric souls whose search for meaning has them up a tree, quite literally. Consider Emery Harris, an unschooled … [Read more...]
Green messiah: At Theatre Lab, Laufer’s ‘Rooted’ to explore mob mentality
Deborah Zoe Laufer gets a lot of ideas for her plays by listening to National Public Radio. That is certainly the case with Rooted, receiving its Florida premiere at FAU Theatre Lab, beginning this Saturday, Feb. 3. “I was listening to Radio Lab and there was a scientist, Monica Gagliano, on, talking about plant consciousness,” the idea that plants have innate … [Read more...]
With quirky ‘Be Here Now,’ FAU Theatre Lab has a major play
What causes some of us to see joy in the world and others to see pure gloom? And if the difference between the two perspectives were caused by a brain tumor, would you accept a potentially fatal condition for a temporarily rosy outlook? That is the dilemma facing Bari, a former professor of nihilism and avowed cynic, in Deborah Zoe Laufer’s quirky and ultimately … [Read more...]
With ‘Be Here Now,’ playwright Laufer looks for meaning in chance
For 15 years, Deborah Zoe Laufer has been writing plays on such diverse subjects as family dysfunction, the end of the world and medical ethics. More often than not, her scripts stem from something she heard on National Public Radio. Certainly that is the case with Be Here Now, Laufer’s latest thought-provoking comedy, opening at Florida Atlantic University’s Theatre Lab … [Read more...]
‘Informed Consent’ nimbly explores intersection of science and ethics
Science has come under fire of late, most notably in the political arena. The rise of science deniers makes Informed Consent, the latest densely packed, morally ambiguous drama by Deborah Zoe Laufer particularly timely, while its core conflict between scientific truth and cultural belief systems give the play a timeless quality. Laufer, whose work has been championed by … [Read more...]
Chekhov meets Beckett in Laufer’s provocative ‘Three Sisters of Weehawken’
What do you get when you cross an iconic play by Anton Chekhov with those of Samuel Beckett, by way of Christopher Durang and his puckish touch? Such a stew would probably resemble Deborah Zoe Laufer’s The Three Sisters of Weehawken, an amiably nutty and ultimately touching new work now receiving its world premiere at Florida Atlantic University’s Theatre Lab. As her title … [Read more...]